Whoever Said it was an Apple?

Whoever Said it was an Apple There’s a story about Eve in the garden of Eden. God told her that the garden of pleasures was hers to wander through for all time. But, God said, you must never eat the fruit from that tree. “Why?” Eve asked. Because I said not to, God replied. Isn’t that enough? But it wasn’t enough, for no matter where she was in the garden, basking in the perfect sun and admiring God’s creations, her mind returned over and over again to that fruit. Are you going to eat it, or just lay there looking at it? One day while resting under the shade of the tree, Eve spied a serpent entwined around its trunk. Eve hung her head. “I can’t eat it.” Why not? “God told me not to.” And did he ever tell you why? “No...” The serpent chuckled. The way I see it, it hissed, God must be keeping something from you. Maybe that fruit up there is the most delicious fruit in all of creation, and He just wants to keep it for himself. “Or maybe it’ll hurt me.” Could be, but don’t you want to find out? She didn’t say anything, but the serpent could tell what she was thinking. Tell you what, we’ll try them together. With its enormous tail, the serpent grabbed two pieces of fruit from the tree, and they bit into them together. And before she could fully comprehend the bite, the slight tartness of the fruit that moistened her tongue, something fundamental had changed. For one, the serpent wasn’t a serpent anymore. There’s another story about Eve. They say that that night, Eve laid with the serpent, and that Cain and all the evils of the world were sprung from their union.

I wonder: could Eve had foreseen this outcome? Perhaps the fruit indeed granted her knowledge of morality, and she had realized that for good to thrive it must always be opposed by evil. Perhaps she had been given knowledge of herself and was for the first time really seeing a man. Perhaps nothing was given to her at all, and the curiosity that led her to eat the fruit next made her wonder what it would be like to have sex with a snake. But the truth is that she did it because she realized that none of it had ever mattered. For god and the garden had never been real at all.